


Not With a Whimper

by salvadore



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Chronological, Off-screen Character Death, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-06
Updated: 2011-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:03:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Walt gets home from OIF and everything unravels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not With a Whimper

**Author's Note:**

> This is Walt-centric. It was written for the gk-remix @ lj. The task was to remix a track from an album into a fic. My track was _Satin in a Coffin_ by Modest Mouse.

Walt isn't surprised that Emily leaves him, not with the way the number of letters she wrote him diminished over time. There was probably some sort of mathematical equation to show the correlation between the diminishing number of letters written and the amount of time it took for her perfume dissipate so the stationary smelled like sand.

Like everything else out there, the letters smelled of dust and sand and struggling men –

But Walt couldn't figure out the equation. He wasn't smart enough to see the end coming from halfway around the world, so it smacked him in the face to see Emily standing in the airport with one hip propped against the wall and looking for all the world like coming to get him was a chore.

Walt can admit it now, as he watches her pull-out of their driveway in her beaten up pick-up, that there were signs that their relationship had an expiration date. He just didn't see them.

Walt stands, watching from the open door way as she jerks the steering wheel all the way around to clear the curb. Holding the screen door open with one hand, Walt raises his other in a wave. He is letting the cold air escape into the muggy Virginian air. Mosquitoes fly into the house around him, but Walt just stand there with one hand raised in a wave.

Emily doesn't wave back. She doesn't honk her horn.

At least, he thinks, she didn't try to fight him for the house.

-

It starts with a phone call from his mom. Walt has only been back about a week and he can still feel the pressure of sand between his finger nails. He has taken more showers since getting back than he usually takes in a month.

In Walt's head he pretends that it is because he can, because it a luxury he wants to enjoy. It doesn't - it can't mean anything more than that.

And it doesn't.

Not until his mom calls.

-

Emily finds Walt crouched in the doorway to their bedroom. His arms are wrapped tight around his ribs. He's bowed in an upright fetal position so his forehead is resting against one side of the frame while his chin rests on his knees. His back is pressed to the other side of the door jam and even though he is taking up the hole doorway, Walt looks small.

When Emily touches his forehead Walt flinches and his eyes flew open, as if he had been asleep. He hadn't been, but Emily has no idea what it was. Whether it was a trance or meditating.

She tries to keep her hand on his forehead and coax him out of the doorway with soft words. He feels cold against her skin and she thinks about fevers, about shaking, about chills. Emily has no idea what she is doing. Everything was going fine and now, its like the world has suddenly tilted sideways and she doesn't know what to do.

She hasn't told Walt yet, but she doesn't want to know. Not now. Not for him.

Slowly he blinks and comes back to her. As if he has shaken off whatever has a hold on him.

After a while, she gets him to move to the bed. For hours she lays on her side watching his chest rise and fall while he lies on his back, staring at the ceiling. At first, Emily rubs his arm, then when that gets no reaction she tries resting her hand on his ribs. Still, Walt does nothing.

Just before she falls asleep Emily will hear him say, “My grandfather is dead.”

-

A week or so later Emily peels at of the drive way as fast as she can manage without tipping her shitty Chevy on its side. She can see him in her side mirror even though she tries not to look. Walt has his hand raised and Emily wants to cry.

She also wants to rage. She wants to hit her steering wheel and maybe drive the truck into a wall just to see if she can walk away. Because he kissed her goodbye like there wasn't anything wrong with her leaving.

In the pit of Emily's stomach she feels a weight that contradicts every rational thought she has conjured for leaving. Its the heavy weight of guilt. When her mascara starts to run as she is pulling onto the interstate, Emily tells herself that one day the guilt won't feel so heavy.

-

Walt flies out to gets his grandfather's affairs in order. The funeral happened a week after his death, but Walt couldn't bring himself to go.

(Only part of it was the fact that the sound of an aircraft taking off reminds him of landing in a sandy wasteland. )

Walt flies out long after his extended family has finished mourning his grandfather's death. It leaves him alone in the small house. 

His grandfather was a small man in his degrading age, stooped and in need of a cane when he walked.

What Walt remembers best is the way his grandfather had smiled and told Walt he was so proud of him. That he knew Walt could become a Recon Marine and that he was doing the right thing, choosing to protect their country. Walt's grandfather tells him that, had Walt's daddy been around, he would have been proud too.

Walt breaks down in the old man's bathroom when he thinks about it.

-

Walt spends weeks lying on the living room floor.

Dust has collected on all of the surfaces even though the house is no longer abandoned. He can't be bothered by it, just as he can't be bothered with cooking. He just wants to bathe and sleep.

At night, Walt dreams of the desert. He must not sleep very still because he always wakes up feeling like he has been bouncing down a dirt road. He is also yards away from the bed or the couch where he first laid down as midday light streams in through an open window.

-

Walt doesn't know when he starts having nightmares about on coming cars, but he thinks it starts around the same time he starts going out each night to find a woman to sleep with. Like there is a correlation between not wanting to be alone in bed and dreaming of shooting civilians - 

\- because the car just won't stop.

-

Anna, or maybe her name is Amy, Walt had forgotten by the time they stumbled drunkenly into her apartment, has large breasts and a high laugh. She'd called Walt so brave, though he hadn't remembered mentioning fighting in Iraq. He must of because she was murmuring things about “being proud to be an American.” She had also called Walt “baby,” and Walt hated it.

It reminded him of Ray and he was too drunk to think about Ray.

When Walt went down on AmyorisitAnna she didn't moan but she made high pitch “ah” sounds in the back of her throat.

And she didn't call Walt “baby.”

-

Walt can’t stand mirrors these days. His eyes are shadowed by deep set bruises from lack of sleep. His skin looks full of sand – feels full of sand – despite the hot showers he takes twice a day. His skin should be raw, pink with the water, but all Walt can feel is the thick layer of sand covered by the weight of camisoles.

Even when his hands are empty they feel heavy with the weight of a weapon.

-

Walt doesn't know how many women there are before Laura. He knows that there were only three before her that he actually took back to his grandfather's house. All of the others dragged him to their apartments while they (he and her) giggled drunkenly and kissed with more spit than he regularly found attractive.

Walt has had at least two more beers than Laura and when they get to his house she takes the keys from him. Laura gets the door open faster than he could have and smiles at him when she holds it open.

In her knee high boots, Laura is the same height as Walt. They are the last thing she sheds as they clutch and kiss their way to his bed. She's older and when she calls him “baby,” it doesn't make Walt think of Ray. It makes him shake and shiver, but more than that it makes him reach for her. Laura slides easy onto his lap after she has wriggled free of her black leather skirt. In the day time her dark eye shadow and skirt might seem ridiculous, but right now Walt is torn by how sexy the tight lines are on her and how beautiful each piece of revealed skin looks.

The only light in the room is sneaking in from the hallway through the partially open bedroom door.

-

Walt wakes up in the middle of night and Laura is still there. She is cradling him to her naked body and brushing his sweaty hair from his face.

Her eyes are wild when Walt manages to meet them.

“Oh baby,” Laura whispers before she curls her body around him tighter. She presses a kiss to his temple and just rocks him back and forth on the filthy sheets. Walt thinks she is saying things, speaking words to him, but all he hears is her heart beat racing against his back.

Walt clutches onto her forearm as her dark hair drops around them in a curtain. She smells like sex and the perfume she was wearing hasn't dissipated yet. Walt breathes it in like it is an escape from the feeling of sand in every orifice and the scent of metal. Beneath him, her skin is warm and it lulls him back to sleep better than any comforting words ever could.

-

When Walt wakes up the sun is high. Its long past noon and Laura is gone. There's a scrap of paper on the kitchen counter with seven digits transcribed in chicken scratch.

There's also an imprint of her lips made in lipstick on Walt's neck. He stares at it in the bathroom mirror, watching the tendons in his neck make it look like its dancing beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. When Walt runs his fingers over it he does so softly, so as not to smear it.

For a moment, Walt seriously considers making it permanent - tattooing it into his skin.

-

Walt wakes up on the living room floor with words dying on his lips.

He wonders what Brad saw when he looked into Walt's eyes. Did he see bullets flying toward a windshield or did he see a man coming unhinged?

-

“Hello,” rasps a familiar voice from the other end of the phone line.

“Ray,” Walt calls into the phone. He has his forehead pressed to the seat of the toilet as he watches his dry spit mar the surface of the water in the bowl. He watches it spin around and listens to the motions of the man on the other end of the line.

“Hey, homes.” Ray sounds wearied and somewhere outside of Walt's intoxicated head he knows that it is before five in the morning. It's not until Ray asks if he's alright that Walt realizes he had started laughing. He thought that of everyone he knew, Ray would be awake at this time of day.

“No,” Walt finally says.

“No?” Ray asks. Walt can practically see the furrowing of his brow. There is a sound of a lighter being flicked open and shut. Once to light Ray's cigarette than every time after that just for the sake of motion, Walt thinks with his eyes closed as he imagines it.

“No, I'm not alright.”


End file.
